It is established that anesthetics fluidize cell membranes and induce disorder. We postulate that this relaxing effect of anesthetics upon cell membranes exposes hydrophobic interior of cell membranes to the membrane-water interface and decrease the surface charge density. Water molecules around the surface charges are electrostricted and have smaller volumes than the bulk water. The decrease of surface charges results in the release of the dense electrostricted water molecules and the system expands. The well-known pressure reversal of anesthesia is caused by the transition of cluster of water molecules changing between the electrostricted condensed state and the anesthetized expanded state. This study is aimed at a critical evaluation of our above hypothesis using phospholipid artificial membranes as a model. Surface tension, surface viscosity and surface potential are measured with monolayers of synthetic phospholipids and the effects of general anesthetics were studied. The results of surface potential indicate that the anesthetics mainly interact at the hydrophilic head groups of the phospholipids. The perpendicular dipole moment of the membrane stayed constant and the observed change of the surface potential was due to the effect upon the surface electrostatic potential. We derived the equation of state for the two component system (phospholipid and anesthetic) with canonical ensemble statistics. The equation is now being fitted to the experimental data with the surface tension measurements. From this study, the interaction energy between the monolayer molecules and anesthetic molecules will be calculated.